avoirdupois or system of a down

The United States of America’s unique status globally as a hold-over on adopting and integrating the metric system of weights and measures cannot be laid at the feet of any historical incident or accident other than familiarity and resistance has become sort of a fount of national pride—with even the most traditional patches of England and her colonies rejecting the Imperial system as an outmoded artefact but it was nonetheless a pleasure to indulge that pirate intrigue had a hand to play in America’s delinquency in adopting the international standard.
A hodgepodge of units inherited from metropolitan Britain and concurrent thalassocracies was vexing the young country’s trade and threatened to intimate certain allegiances and so then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson invited one French scientist behind the development and standardization of the metric system, Joseph Dombey, to come and demonstrate the merits of his enterprise. Storms blew the visit emissary’s boat into the privateer-infested waters of the Caribbean, however, who ransomed Dombey (ransomed him to death—unfortunately) and cared nothing for his baubles—including a metallic rod that was to be America’s standard kilogram, though there’s a movement in place to divorce the value from a physical representative. It is difficult to gauge what consequence that the success of Dombey’s and Jefferson’s mission might have had, as America launched several other campaigns to align themselves with international standards (the USA is in possession of four archival kilograms for calibration purposes) but never managed to overcome the inertia of custom, which is a powerful thing to be sure.

noli me tangere

For the first time, as Hyperallergic reports, the eighteenth century Austrian grimoire Touch Me Not! is available as a full colour facsimile with translations of the German and Latin texts—which is rather a unique primer on the dark arts, focused nearly exclusively on the transgressive and with few pretensions to spare for the best intentions of the practicioner—especially one who has failed to take a sufficiently reverend approach for the esoteric arts.
Also being sufficiently girded with psychedelic substances whose potions are also laid out in the book can’t harm either. Warnings abound throughout the visceral compendium not to meddle in such matters and the Touch Me Not! is the final proscriptive in the work’s title “A most rare Summary of the entire magical Art by its most famous Masters of the Year 1057”—though this embellishment of ancient provenance is probably only meant to entice contemporary (circa 1775) even more. Still the command does also conjure what Jesus uttered to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection—there is too much invested in every iconographic tradition for it just to be a coincidence and for it not to carry some echo of significance. Similar to the weight given in medical circles to the placebo effect (meaning I will please), classically trained surgeons were often instructed that most organs in all but the most dire of emergencies beseeched “noli me tangere” and that invasive measures were seldom advisable.

mind the gap

Drawn from a variety of sources, we really enjoyed perusing this curated gallery of vintage London Underground posters and advertising campaigns in order to boost ridership.
Many of the brightest and boldest examples date from the 1920s and from the studios of graphic designer Horace Taylor but the collection (with many we’ve never encountered before) spans the whole of the twentieth century in all styles and is definitely worth checking out.  Over the ages, I think London has done an outstanding job in promoting public transportation, the hallmark of sound and convenient infrastructure being that people choose to take it rather than strive to avail themselves of other means.

sententiae

Though enslaved when original brought from Syria to Italy, Publilius Syrus was subsequently freed and legitimised (classically trained) by his master once he realised his oratory potential and was allowed to spend his days in observation, penning pithy maxims.
Among his most famous and enduring sayings is that “a rolling stone gathers no moss” (Saxum volutum non obducitur musco—which also contains the anti-proverb, a rolling stone gathers momentum) is variously interpreted as people always on the move establish no true roots or that moss is substitute phrase for stagnation but that is not his only one left up to the listener. Often misattributed to the playwright Euripedes, Syrus’ Stultum facit fortuna, quem vult perdere (catalogued as Aphorism 911, the former, number 524) means “Whom Fortune wishes to destroy, she first makes mad” has enjoyed a like measure popular culture relatability with it being put in the mouths of several worthies to include Antigone, Prometheus and Captain James Tiberius Kirk with different shades of meaning ultimately up for debate in terms of causality.

apogee

As a reminder that that damned paperclip overlooking New York City’s Central Park was not the only conceptual skyscraper dreamt up and not built during the past year fraught with proposals to raise and raze contentious and symbolic in the realm of landmarks and property development, we could appreciate this list of superlatives from architectural doyen Dezeen. Our personal favourite and the one worth the ambition remains the so-called Analemma Tower (forever free from licensing-arrangements, one hopes) and tethered to an orbiting, captured asteroid (which seems technically feasible) or artificial satellite and whose residents would be able to circumnavigate the globe as it spins beneath. Be sure to visit Dezeen at the link above to learn more and tell us what your favourite is and how you’d help to realise the impossible.

these kids today with their y2k

For those who have become accustomed to using the turn of the century or fin de siècle as a way to reckon future and past dates I’m sure have already come to wrestle with the sobering fact that the Year 2000 Computer Bug will attain the age of majority soon and that 1970 is not thirty years in the past but more like nearly five decades and hardly futuristic.
We nonetheless appreciated this collection of popular culture call-backs that the times inspired—from novelty songs, sitcom staples, class-action suits and survival guides for the technological apocalypse soon to visit humanity. Ultimately, there was no ensuing disaster and tigers did not rain from the heavens (no matter how we might try to frighten ourselves) and while I know that there’s little commonality about this non-event and the esteem for which we have for other, real impending disasters which may not be repaired with a simple patch are nonetheless within our power to prevent and part of me wonders if that boy-who-cried-wolf, survivor-mentality does not somehow resign some to leave everything to invisible hand, trickle-down providence. What do you remember about those last tense moments but forcing oneself to abandon and partying like it was 1999? What media digest do you remember prophesying the worst?  I suppose the y2k worries and shared memories will perhaps even more so than the prevalence of connectivity and virtual personae be the shibboleth that separates one generation from the next. 

dandiprat

Although of unknown etymology it seems that the original meaning of the term referred to a curiously indeterminately valued silver coin—anywhere between one and one-half to three and one half pence, it seems to have lodged itself in the language with a figurative sense first with the circa 1604 (when the particular coin was also common-currency) stage-production of Thomas Heywood’s comedy, The Wise Woman of Hoxton, as a bargain of a dowry in exchange for a marriage commitment. Dandiprat came to signify first someone small in stature and then someone of small character, a contemptible, insufferable person—but not all connotations are necessarily negative.